Now Companies too have profiles on LinkedIn!
Well, I've tried to stay away from the blog for as far as I can, but Mario has been really bugging me about blogging for LinkedIn and announcing LinkedIn's Company Profiles gave him the perfect opportunity to get me in front of the camera (see below). As you can see, we had a fun shoot yesterday where I give an overview of Company Profiles.
Check out a few examples of Company Profiles | eBay, Google, Yahoo!, Oracle, etc...
For those of you who don't have time to go through the 3 minute demo below (and I can't fault you on that), here's a quick summary:
What are LinkedIn Company Profiles?
Starting now, you'll be able to see over 160,000 profiles of companies on LinkedIn, ranging from Fortune 500 companies (e.g. eBay) to philanthropic organizations (e.g. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) as well as LinkedIn's own Company Profile page. Company Profiles on LinkedIn is a succinct overview of a company's industry data in combination with LinkedIn data along certain key metrics.
Overview
1. Finding Company Profiles
The easiest way to access any company profile is stumbling upon it through individual profiles themselves. As you're browsing any profile, look out for a logo right next to company titles, in any individual's work history. Clicking through the highlighted company links will take you to the Company Profile directly.
So, keeping in mind the unwritten "rule of the LinkedIn blog", which is insert an Adam Nash reference at every given opportunity in the blog. So, let's start with Adam Nash's profile.
Clicking on the company name (in this case, eBay, Inc.) will take you to the Company Profile page, which you can find here.
An alternative to navigating company profiles is also the Search box that you can find once you are on any company's profile page.
Please remember, this is still in beta and we'll be adding easier ways for you to access this information in the following weeks.
Once you're on a company page you'll notice two sets of modules, the set of modules on the left is about about relevant people information and on the right you can see some key company stats modules. Given below are more details.
2. Relevant People Information modules
The modules you see on the left pane of the Company profile are about professionals within the organization, highlighted and sorted by relevance and distance from You, in four key categories.
* People in your Network
The first module in this space shows you the people in your network who work at that company. As with all LinkedIn results, these are sorted by the number of degrees they are away from you within the LinkedIn ecosystem.
* New Hires
In many companies, especially fast growing companies such as ourselves (at LinkedIn), it's always great to find out who're the most recent hires and this module answers that question.
* Recent Promotions and Changes
Another question that I'd love to find an answer for are who're the movers and shakers within my organization. This could be particularly helpful for large Fortune 500 companies and since the results are sorted by how close they are to you, the chances are you'll always stumble upon peers you know well.
* Most Popular Profiles
The last module on the left pane, shows those individuals who're in the News recently. As you can see the eBay examples show the President, two Senior Vice Presidents and Chief Marketing Officer among others.
3. Key Company stat modules
To the right of the relevance modules, you'll be able to find two key information modules on the company, which are described below.
* Related companies
The first of the two company modules, surfaces relevant information about the career trajectory of the company's employees. Not only does it show the companies they come from and go to, but also connectivity among professionals working at different companies.
* Key Statistics
The information you find in the key stats module is aggregated from non-personally identifiable data of LinkedIn users who are currently employed by this company. There are two modules within Key Stats that we surface. One is basic data on Industry, Type, Status, etc..., which we get from our partner Business Week while the second module has unique information culled from LinkedIn that hasn't been available before. They range from Common Job Title, Top Schools to Median Age and Tenure within the company.
Related blogosphere coverage:
* TechCrunch | LinkedIn, Now for Companies
* CNET News | LinkedIn's business directory goes live
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Have fun perusing profiles of companies from the mainstream to the Long Tail of corporate America's ecosystem and stay tuned for updates as we make this more relevant for each LinkedIn user. As I said in the video, please continue nagging Mario by leaving a comment below. Keep those comments coming in :)